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Governments strategy to fight Covid 19 in a nutshell:
1. Covid spreads.
2. Shut down the economy, except the essential part, which is most of it.
3. Covid spreads.
3. Ease the shut down when things become desperate.
4. Covid spreads.
5. Repeat.
6. Pray for a miracle vaccine.
1. Covid spreads.
2. Shut down the economy, except the essential part, which is most of it.
3. Covid spreads.
3. Ease the shut down when things become desperate.
4. Covid spreads.
5. Repeat.
6. Pray for a miracle vaccine.
The only countries that have successfully fought the virus, including Taiwan, China, Australia and New Zealand did it by:
1. Identifying infected persons quickly by massive testing and tracing their contacts.
2. Isolating those persons before they spread it to others.
1. Identifying infected persons quickly by massive testing and tracing their contacts.
2. Isolating those persons before they spread it to others.
We lack the skills and resources to do this, so we depend on lockdown. The test trace and isolate strategy has minimal negative social and economic impacts, the negative impact of lockdown is huge. It is not clear that lockdown saves any significant number of lives.
While a higher proportion of sick people get medical treatment due to lockdown and this saves lives, this benefit is offset by an increase in the number of poverty related deaths and poverty related suffering and hardship that is borne by millions.
The benefits of lockdown, the greater availability of medical care, accrue overwhelmingly to the richest 10% who can access it, while the costs of lockdown are borne by the poorest people, who still can’t access medical care, but who suffer increased poverty and hardship.
